Posts Tagged ‘Featured’

When most people consider the reasons for going on a round the world trip, the first and most obvious one is to “see the world.” This is a great and noble reason all by itself, but there is so much more to it than that. Long-term travel changes people, almost always for the better.

Most people find a new ability to accept other people, cultures, and traditions, and also tolerate those they might not agree with. This has nothing to do with political philosophy, and everything to do with actual experience seeing amazing things first hand, and comparing and contrasting them to things you’ve seen before. Part of the fun is discovering these subtle åaspeåcts on your own as you go, but for a quick preview, below are 8 of the less obvious reasons why RTW travel is so wonderful.

Break Every Routine You Have

This is something most people are familiar with to a smaller degree from shorter trips, but when your entire life shifts to long-term travel, it becomes much more significant. Put simply, most of us have routines that make each day, or at least each weekday, remarkably similar. We wake up around the same time, get coffee, have breakfast, go to work, and so on, and most of this is performed in a zombie-like state because each day is nearly identical. When you go on a 2-week trip you’ll break all these routines for those two weeks, but it’s hard not to fall right back into them when you get home.

But when you begin a life of long-term travel those old routines are right out the window, and when you finally call someplace “home” again, it’ll be hard to even remember what those nearly-identical days used to consist of.

You’ll be forced to reexamine your schedule, what you eat and when, how you entertain yourself, who you keep in contact with, and pretty much everything else about your life.

It can be very refreshing (and quite disorienting) to hit the reset button and invite only those things back into your life that you really want.

Our world is filled with must-see sights and attractions, and some of them are far easier to reach than others. Seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum in Rome is easy on nearly any casual swing through Europe, whether it’s early in your life or late. Sights like those are also surrounded by hundreds of other worthwhile things, so working them into your schedule is best left to a regional trip where you can give everything the attention that it deserves.

But the world is also home to a nearly infinite list of excellent sights and attractions that are harder to see without going to great lengths and tremendous expense. Some of them are set among other things that could help justify a special trip, but many of Earth’s greatest attractions are spread around the globe in places that aren’t conquered so easily.

Those planning a Round The Word (RTW) trip have a special advantage in their sightseeing future, since just a short jump can put them in one of these outstanding places that seem so remote otherwise. The list below could be 100 places long, and a huge part of the appeal of a RTW trip is having the ability to invent your own itinerary, so really, anything goes. Nevertheless, here are 11 places that many people find to be huge highlights of a RTW trip, and it’s also fairly easy to string many of these together on the average global tour.

Iguazu Falls, Argentina/Brazil

It’s hard to classify the appeal of watching water rapidly changing elevation en mass, but for one reason or another nearly everyone who visits the Iguazu Falls finds it stunning and very worthwhile. Globally speaking, these falls are far more impressive than Niagara, and their only rival is Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, and that one is far too out of the way for most RTW travelers.

There are actually 270 separate falls spread over 2.7 kilometers of curving forest, so the number of unique views of the falls is almost endless.

Iguazu is spread between Argentina and Brazil, with each side having a very impressive and different national park from which to take in the views, and there are speed boat rides through the falls, among other things, located down below, so spending most of a day at each park doesn’t get old as quickly as you might fear.

Travelers counting countries also get a bonus as the falls are where Paraguay meets Argentina and Brazil, and short forays into that landlocked country are possible during your visit. You can reach the Iguazu Falls area on long bus rides from anywhere in the region, and also on short and cheap flights from Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro. Package deals including a flight, hotel, and tours of both parks are quite affordable.

If you are reading this, it means you belong to a community of like-minded travelers. A community who loves to help one another and offer assistance to those planning big trips.

Below is a trip that a Bootsnall RTW Planner, Henrik, is currently planning with his wife and 3 children (under 8-years-old). Do you have advice or related experience for him? Any tips to maximize his route and maybe save him a few bucks along the way? What would you do differently? Comment below to share your thoughts.

If you have route planning anxiety of your own, submit your route below and get feedback like Henrik.Sign up for a free account on Indie, build your route, save it, and put the link in the comments.

The BootsnAll community was built around like-minded travelers helping each other and inspiring them to get on the road and take an indie trip. It’s something we believe every human should do at least once in their lives. Any input you could offer would be appreciated.

There are literally an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to your RTW itinerary, and we like to highlight 5 trips per month to help narrow down where you might want to go. This month’s trip focus on overland travel, which is an important part of long-term travel. Utilizing overland travel on your trip will help save tons of of money plus it really helps you dig into the local culture in many areas of the world.

We like to highlight cool indie trips we create on our trip planner. Check out these five fares we’ve found this month on Indie, BootsnAll’s Multi-Stop Trip Planner. All use overland travel to help save a few bucks:

Have you contemplated taking a round the world trip but given up before you even got started? Has the thought of planning for a trip like this – from figuring out how much it costs, to fear about what to do with your job, to deciding between RTW and buy as you go flights, to thinking about packing – deterred you from taking your trip of a lifetime?

If you are looking for something a little different in your round the world trip, then start planning your trip of a lifetime with Indie, our multi-stop trip planner. And don’t forget to sign up for BootsnAll’s RTW newsletter, delivering special deals, RTW trip planning advice, and resources via email every single month. We also have a Facebook fan page and Twitter page, so be sure to like and follow those to keep up to date on all your RTW travel needs.

If looking at the news these days has you feeling low, you have two choices – you can stay glued to the television until there’s something good to report, or you can get out and make something good happen. We are, of course, advocating for the latter – and we think one of the best ways to create your own good news is by getting out and seeing the world.

Easily one of the best things about traveling right now is that there are exceptional deals available. Airlines and hotels (among other travel-related industries) are cutting prices in order to lure travelers back out of their economic-slump-induced hibernation, so if you can take time out for a trip right now you’ll be in for some amazing discounts. And that includes RTW tickets.

Here are the February RTW ticket deals – these prices are good through February 28, 2009.

These itineraries are just a sample to get your mind going – they might be just what you had in mind, but if they’re not exactly where you wanted to go that’s okay, too. You can plan your own customized RTW trip in seconds and visit just the cities you want.

When people get serious about the idea of going on a round the world trip, obviously one of the first issues involves putting together some kind of itinerary or route map. Sure, there are people who prefer to just buy their first one-way ticket, and make the rest up as they go, but if you really want to travel “around the world” it’s not a bad idea to have a general plan in mind early on, even if you end up winging it anyway.

As someone who’s done a long RTW in addition to dozens of other trips of various lengths, I’ve learned quite a bit about how these itineraries and RTW route maps tend to go, so I’ll be sharing some itinerary ideas along with commentary here over the next few months.

Leaving from North America

While it’s true that Australians probably travel more per capita than any of the rest of us, and Europeans aren’t far behind, Americans and Canadians still make up a huge percentage of the people doing this. So to begin with, I’ll share the route I ended up doing myself, and then I’ll branch into other starting points in the future.(more…)

When most people begin planning their beginning round the world trip itinerary, it’s common to concentrate on RTW must-see sights – things like the Great Pyramids of Giza or the Acropolis in Athens, but along the way you are going to want to take some breaks from those historical sights, and fortunately you’ll be able to find some really nice resorts that are surprisingly affordable.

Before you leave home on such a trip it might not occur to you that you’ll need a “vacation” from your vacation, but you will. If you plan this sort of thing in advance, and even pencil it into your original itinerary, you’ll be able to relax for long periods of time while spending minimal funds in the process.

Another reason to stop in resort areas

This part doesn’t occur to some people, but the common reason that folks go on a RTW trip is some form or another of they “want to see the world.” Well, sure, the world works as often as it has to, and people build museums and parks and whatnot, but the world also likes to take a bit of time off when it can. There isn’t much history involved with most resort areas, but they are still a big part of the culture everywhere they exist around the world.(more…)

Whether you’ve resolved to travel more this year or not (and what travelers among us don’t make that resolution pretty much every year?), chances are good that you’ll be at least poking around the web looking for a cheap plane ticket now and then – especially in this economy. But if all you’re looking for is cheap international airfare, we can help you out. In fact, with the deals you’ll find listed below, you may be tempted into making more than just a simple round-trip journey.

See, if you’ve priced out round-trip flights to just about anywhere lately, you’ll recognize that the prices on these multi-stop tickets are pretty incredible. I’ve paid more for a plain old round-trip ticket to Europe than these tickets cost, and with these tickets you’ll get several cities thrown in. So no matter what you think your travel plans will be this year, do yourself a favor and take a look at these tickets. You just might get inspired by one of the itineraries.

Here are the January RTW ticket deals – these prices are good through January 31, 2009.

And if these itineraries don’t tickle your fancy completely, that doesn’t mean you have to twiddle your thumbs until next month’s deals come out – start planning your own customized RTW trip in seconds and hit just the cities you want.